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Unformatted text preview: Human Geography April 16, 2009 My Footprint While our standard of living, as Americans, is often critically compared to that of diverse peoples across the globe, the concept of determining the number of Earths necessary to sustain the human population relative to a single individuals ecological footprint is both unique (in my experience) and fascinating. How many Earths would we need if everyone on Earth lived like me? After taking the survey on myfootprint.org , it was determined that 5.44 Earths would be necessary to support around six billion mes. My ecological footprint is a whopping total of 211 acres. My carbon footprint is 73.8 acres, around 20 acres lower than the United States average of 91.4 acres per person. On the other hand, my food footprint was 76.5 acres, about 10 acres higher than the 65.7 acre U.S. average. Additionally, my housing footprint of 36 acres was higher than the 31.6 acre average. My best conservative effort came under the goods and services category, where my footprint of 24.8 acres was around 30 acres under the 57.6 acre average. All told, I beat the U.S. average (246.4) by 35 acres. Upon examining the effects of various lifestyle changes on my footprint, I found that the little things dont do quite as much as I would have expected. For example, adding various little things dont do quite as much as I would have expected....
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